!Ask a Mexican!

Sometimes, the Mexican gets questions about butt love or the Virgin of Guadalupe, sometimes with thoughtful comments. Here's one regarding the Mexican's Nov. 11 definition of chunti as a word Mexicans in Mexico use to deride poorer Mexicans:

Just read this week's column aboutchuntisand had to share this: I teach seventh grade in Norwalk, and my students use the term a lot. One day I asked a kid why he looked so sleepy in class, and he replied, "There was achuntiparty next door last night, and they blasted their music until after midnight." When I asked him what achuntiwas, he said, "People who listen to Lupillo Rivera andnarcocorridosand wear tacky clothes."

HB Gringa

In that same column, the Mexican also wrote that Mexican men who grab their crotches and whistle at gabachas are the "type of immigrant that makes America great—visionary, innovative, horny." Reader Dark Horse wasn't happy:

I thought you were going to be yourself and think of a creative way to answer such a funny question, but you didn't. You blew it. To actually condone Mexican men or, for that matter, any man to treat the opposite sex with such blatant disrespect is appalling. It's exactly that mentality that makes thegabachossay, "That's why [Mexicans] clean my toilet and mow my lawn." If Mexican men would just park that ridiculous machismo once in a while, they would realize there's more to life than minimum wage, sex without protection and Adidas cologne.

Sorry, Dark Horse. Mexican men will never park their ceaseless horniness; do that and they might as well call themselves Guatemalans. Just check out this question:

Dear Mexican,

I worken el corazón de SanTana: Fourth Street. It seems every weekend I see a 25-year-old wab with a 14-year-old girl. Why are wabs always after the little girls? Don't they have any laws against pedophiles in Mexico? Where are the parents?

One Confused Pocho

Dear Pocho,

Along with tuberculosis, poverty and bubbly sodas, Mexicans also import their sexual mores. The age of consent in Mexico is 12, and girls can marry at 14. Call it the lively hand of history: the idea of bedding pubescent maidens is as much a part of Mexican morality as calendars with religious figures—even ranchera idol Pedro Infante winked at the trend in his classic canción "El Gavilán Pollero" ("The Chicken Hawk"). The quinceañera, that much-ballyhooed party parents throw to mark a girl's entry into womanhood—at 15—is really just a cattle call: by holding a lavish ceremony, Mexican fathers announce to the world their daughter's availability. The parents don't have a problem with it—most of them married young too. Gabachos like to use this phenomenon as proof of Mexican men's inherent perversion, but what's the bigger crime against nature, Confused Pocho: 20- or 30-some-year-old Mexican men lusting after a girl who just broke open her first box of tampons, or a Balboa Bay Club octogenarian leaning on his latest Corona del Mar High School graduate?

Got a spicy question about Mexicans? Ask the Mexican at garellano@ocweekly.com. And those of you who do submit questions: include a hilarious pseudonym,por favor, or we'll make one up for you!